Poem: Moon for Aisha

Moon for Aisha

— for Kamilah Aisha Moon, with a line after Cornelius Eady’s ”Gratitude”

By Aracelis Girmay

Expensive Aisha,
I imply to be writing you
a birthday letter, although it’s not
September, the winter already
nearing, the bareness
of bushes, their weightlessness,
their gestures —
grace or grief. The home windows
of buildings all shining early, lit with gentle,
& I’m solely ten & using
all of my horses dwelling,
nonetheless sisterless, wanting sisters.

You have no idea me but.
In truth, we’re years away
from that life. However I’m grateful
for some inexplicable factor,
let’s name it “freedom,” or “evening,” the fear
& glee of being outdoors late, after darkish,
my mom’s voice shouting
for me beneath stars
which, I realized at school,
are all of a sudden not so completely different
from the small salt of fathers, & gratitude
for that, & for the crimson home of
your mom’s blood,
& then, you, all almost grown,
all long-legged laughter,
already realizing all of the songs
& all of the dances,
not my buddy, but,
however, by some means — Out There.

In a single model of our lives,
it’s November.
By way of a window I see
considered one of our elders is
a black eye of a girl, is
a thinker, & magnificent. At a desk,
she builds her home together with her arms,
with paper, wooden & clay, the years of sunshine
& the years of darkish. She sees oblivion
& turns, crowns her head,
as a substitute, with flowers,
the higher & the decrease worlds.
Lightning streaks the black thoughts
of her hair, she leaves
it there, then cleans the home
with laughter, dances broadly
in every room, a pirouette,
a wop. Outside, she dares to put on
the home key from a silver hoop recalling
the moon, the gleaming syllable: of
a planet darkish with fires & time.
She is superb, isn’t she?
It’s all the time her birthday.
She has all the time lived
to inform a component
of the story of the world,
what occurred right here.

If not a moon, what can
we convey this lady who
walks forward? For whom
you have been named,
& whose identify has been
added to by you
whose language crowns
the darkish discipline of what has
been hushed, of what’s
stunning & black, & blue.

Victoria Chang is a poet whose new guide of poems is “The Timber Witness The whole lot” (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her fifth guide of poems, “Obit” (2020), was named a New York Occasions Notable Ebook and a Time Should-Learn. Aracelis Girmay is the creator of a number of books, together with the poetry collections “Tooth” (Curbstone Press, 2007), “Kingdom Animalia” (BOA Editions, 2011) and “the black maria” (BOA Editions, 2016), from which this poem is taken.